A^7 




'^, 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



'ell) ^nglanir Agricultural ^m% 



HAMPDEN PAEK, SPRINGFIELD, MASS,, 



I'i 



SEPTEMBER 9, 1864, 



^ 



By JOHN A. ANDREW, 

GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. 




fi o s t oN "" 

WRIGHT & POTTER, PRINTERS, No. 4 SPRING LANB. 
18 64. 



^. 



^ 



Salem, September 10, 1864. 

Sir, — I am instructed, by a vote of the New England Agricultural Society, 
to express the thanks of the members for the eloquent and appropriate Address 
delivered by you at Springfield on the 9th inst., and to request a copy for 
publication. 

I have the honor to be, 

Respectfully, your ob't servant, 

GEO. B. LORING, 

President New England Agricultural Society. 

His Excellency John A. Andrew, 

Governor of Massachusetts, Boston. 



Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

Executive Department, Boston, > 
September 13, 1864. > 

To Dr. George B. Loring, President of the New England Agricultural 

Society : 

Sir, — A copy of the Address delivered at the request of your Society, on the 
occasion of its exhibition on Hampden Park, in Springfield, last week, is 
placed in your hands for publication, in respectful deference to the request 
communicated to me by your note of the 10th instant, and with sincere appre- 
ciation of the indulgent manner with which the members of the Society were 
pleased to receive this effort in their service. 

I have the honor to be, 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

JOHN A. ANDREW. 



ADDRESS. 



I hail this becoming and beneficent gathering of the most 
intelligent yeomanry of New England. Here we touch her 
mother earth, while we join our friendly hands together, in the 
spirit of a fresh dedication of our powers and hopes to the task 
of "deepening the foundations of her solid fame, of widening 
the circle of her gracious influence, and brightening the spark- 
ling diadem of her peaceful grandeur. 

Let us remember for a moment the external picture of New 
England, as she presents herself to the eye of the economist 
and the thoughtful agriculturist. Comprising the six States or 
Commonwealths of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, her area covers some- 
thing more than 65,038 square miles, or nearly forty-two 
millions of acres of surface. 

Of these acres, Maine possesses 20,330,240, of which only 
5,700,755 acres are reckoned by the census of 1860 as land 
included in farms ; while, again, of that number, but 2,677,215 
are classed with " improved lands." 

New Hampshire contains 5,939,200 acres ; her farms includ- 
ing 3,744,630 acres ; while her improved lands are but 2,367,- 
039 acres. 

Vermont contains an area of 6,535,680 acres, of which 
4,160,839 are reckoned as land in farms, but of which quantity, 
again, but 2,758,443 acres are returned as under improvement. 

Massachusetts covers a surface of 4,992,000 acres, of which 
3,338,724 are included i,n farms, while but 2,155,512 acres are 
classed among improved lands. 



Rhode Island possesses 519,698 acres of farms out of her 
835,840 acres of area, but of these acres, 329,884 only are 
reckoned as improved lands. 

Connecticut has 2,991,360 acres, with farms to the extent of 
2,504,265, but her improved lands are stated at 1,830,808 
acres. 

Thus, of the whole area of New England, only 12,118,901 
acres, or a little more than three-tenths of her surface, have yet 
been brought within the category of improved lands. With a 
population of 3,135.293 persons on a soil reputed to be sterile, 
in a climate often styled unkind, New England had, in 1860, 
accumulated an aggregate of wealth, invested in her lands, rail- 
roads, mills, ships, and the varied products of ingenuity and 
taste which indicate the industry and wealth of a highly culti- 
vated and favGired people, amounting in value to not less than 
two thousand millions of dollars. While she has contributed, 
according to the latest census, 560,336 of the sons and daugh- 
ters native to her soil, to swell the populations of other Com- 
monwealths outside of New England ; and has invested of her 
earnings, as she has scattered her children, in every State, on 
every waterfall, and in every mart, and mine, and enterprise 
of industry. Were her population to the square mile equal, 
throughout, to that of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, — 
whose soil, as a whole, is the least fertile of the six States, — 
she would rise to the number of ten and a quarter millions of 
souls, which, with a corresponding increase of wealth, would 
present an aggregate of real and personal values equal to more 
than seven thousand millions of dollars. When we remember 
that the increase of wealth has constantly far outrun the 
growth of population, we have before us the prospect of a 
numerical strength and economic thrift, as the reward of our 
intelligent pursuit of industry, capable of an expansion not 
yet to be measured, which foretells for New England a proud 
and powerful place in the history of our national future. 



The diversity of the pursuits to which her people are devoted 
is not only manifold but universal, including all the varie- 
ties of industrial enterprise, extending in all the directions of 
human action and human thought. Possessing all the features 
and peculiarities, over a large portion of her domain, of a 
rural life, her people are not only farmers or husbandmen ; 
but they lead the rest of the country in the perils of the seas 
as fishermen and whale-hunters ; they furnish seamen to the 
navy and the mercantile marine in large disproportion to their 
numerical, masculine strength ; plant on all their waterfalls 
manufactories of cotton and wool ; establish in every village 
the shops of artisans of every handicraft ; build ships all along 
our coast ; fabricate arms of all kinds and calibres, heavy 
ordnance and iron-clad vessels of war ; and make jewelry and 
instruments of music, as well as anchors, steam-engines, hats 
and shoes. They raise tobacco in the Valley of the Connecticut 
and in other genial soils ; as well as Indian corn, vegetables, 
hay and forage, all over New England. Not only ice and 
granite, but even sugar becomes a part of her production and 
is a profitable source of gain as well as comfort or luxury. 
She has rendered the railway a domestic institution, so that 
the steam car visits nearly every hamlet and every considerable 
town. The music of its whistle no longer frightens the 
farmer's horse, nor does the proximity of the thundering loco- 
motive, raging and sighing under its weighty burden, and with 
the pressure of its fiery spirit,' disturb the equanimity of the 
anxious matron, careful for the safety of her child. 

The needle-woman, by the domestic hearth, or in the shops 
where labor associates with capital, aided by the sewing 
machine — one of the last, best gifts of mechanical invention to 
women if not to men, — the weaver, by the side of her carpet- 
loom, which seems to think, as well as work, and which almost 
talks ; the shoemaker pegging a boot at a blow ; the laborer 
who fills his gravel car by two strokes of a steam shovel, and 



8 



upsets it by a turn of his hand ; the husbandman who mows, 
and rakes his hay, and reaps, and threshes, and measures 
out his golden grain by the agencies of cunning mechanisms, 
almost without fatigue, are only a few of the thousand illus- 
trations of how the human will, and the immortal intelli- 
gence of the human intellect, bridging over the gulf which lies 
between the boundaries of matter and mind, are vindicating the 
divinely-given mastership of man over all the things which 
God hath made on earth. Nay, more than that ; for the things 
invisible and impalpable, existing as hidden forces in the vast 
abyss of Nature — caloric, and steam, and electricity, and mag- 
netism, and light itself; the mysteries of sciences so wonderful 
and august that they seem to tread celestial spheres and to 
sweep the mind, bewildered by the contemplation, far off be- 
yond the domain of knowledge, or of reason, — these, all these, 
tamed and allured to human uses, are familiar spirits by whose 
means a thousand daily miracles are wrought, without amaze- 
ment to the beholder, and with little consciousness of our own 
how nearly we are brought to the contemplation of the very 
thoughts of Deity. Those winged horses harnessed to the 
plough, the loom, the travelling car, carrying burdens, crush- 
ing ores, hammering granite and iron, or weaving delicate 
tissues for ornament or luxury ; or flashing intelligence by 
invisible magic, are daily augmenting in number and power — 
though they had long since added mechanical forces to the 
industrial strength of our New England, equivalent to that of 
many millions of men. 

Besides all this, there are the peculiar advantages of neigh- 
borhood or contiguity, derived from compactness and from con- 
venience of transportation, whether found on the shores of the 
sea, in the flow of rivers, or in artificial highways. Her long, 
continuous sea-coast line, with its many harbors, stretches from 
Calais all around to the Hudson. Her rivers, although gen- 
erally not navigable far inland,— -such as the Penobscot, the 



Kennebec, the Merrimac, the Connecticut, the Blackstone, and 
a hundred minor streams — but still beautiful diversifications of 
the landscape, have all contributed beyond human estimate to 
her development. They have floated the hemlocks, oaks and 
pines from interior forests to the sea. They turned the mill 
and ground the corn for our fathers in the early humility of 
their worldly fortunes. The rill tinkling down its rocky 
declivity, or an Androscoggin roaring along precipitous descents, 
has alike summoned or allured laborers and capitalists to 
settle along its banks, where, in happy union with the flowing 
waters, they have created wealth, builded cities, hii I piU'J uj> 
acquisitions from every source of Ingenuity and Art. 

And what variety of landscape is yours? If winter is 
rugged and severe, it is yet bracing and grand. Can a people 
become monotonous and sluggish in their thought, who must 
toil betimes to shelter themselves from its power, but who are 
yet encouraged and warmed by the tropical heat of our mid- 
summer weather, and are charmed by the soft temperatures of 
our verdant Junes, and our rich and golden Octobers ? Can a 
people become indifferent to the influences of Beauty discerned 
and felt, either in the sweet repose of Nature, or in her 
sublimer glories, to whom are familiar the landscape of Lake 
George, of Champlain, of the Moosehead ; the valleys of the 
Deerfield, the Connecticut, the Housatonic ; the White Moun- 
tains, piled in rugged variety of projecting rocks from fertile 
levels up into eternal heights of snow ; the rich allurements of 
the Green Mountains, the delicious surprises of Berkshire ; the 
great and sphynx-like Capes, and the boundless, soundless, 
mysterious Ocean, which they strive to penetrate ; whose inward 
ear has heard the wind-harp of the forests, the music of the 
waterfalls and the bass of the Everlasting Sea whose tides beat 
time in the ceaseless anthem of Creation ? 

I do not intend, even in a characteristic assemblage of her 
own people, to laud or magnify New England. I would put 

2 



10 



far away the least temptation to exalt ourselves, or to over- 
estimate anything which pertains to the communities which 
this Society in a measure represents. The thought which 
overshadows and controls all others, is that which suggests the 
character and the measure of the responsibility of New Eng- 
land to the whole, and to every part, of that great and common 
country, of which to-day lier six Commonwealths are geo- 
graphically but a fragment. Meeting together in your capacity 
of New England men and of New England yeomanry, the more 
intense, discriminating and intelligent your filial love, the more 
devoted and unconditional will be the affectionate patriotism 
with which you must regard that National Union, that grand 
but menaced Nationality, of which these States are constituents. 
From the domestic hearth-stone, from the fireside worship of 
home, the child ascends, led by parental hands to the grander 
temple where priests and elders wave their censers and offer 
sacrifice. Thus may we ourselves at this more domestic altar 
receive strength and inspiration which will be our encourage- 
ment and our instruction when we ascend our National Zion, 
to unite with all the tribes of our American Israel. 

I have not failed to perceive nor to exult in the thought oi 
the boundless possibilities of grandeur, and beneficent power, 
which pertain to the future of our America. I do not forget 
that when the National jurisdiction over all our States and 
territories shall resume its unquestioned sway, and our National 
career shall begin anew, the accelerated increase of wealth 
and of population in their necessary distribution and diffusion 
will, year by year, constantly diminish the relative material 
strength of these North-eastern States. The broad lands, the 
deep soils, the cheap farms, the coal mines, the gold fields, the 
virgin forests, the oil wells, the cotton plant and the sugar-cane 
of the West and of the South, of the Gulf and of the Pacific 
Coast, cannot fail in their attractions. The swelling tide of 
immigrant populations will flow across these Atlantic borders 



11 



to those alluring homes and seats of mdustry. Along with 
many better men will come the greedy adventurers, some of 
them ignorant, some of them sordid, unblessed by filial love or 
patriotic sentiment, to seize the opportunities of golden fortune. 
The wild chase for gain, the allurements of nature herself, the 
temptations of that fevered life which distinguishes the youth 
of society in fertile and fruitful States, containing within them- 
selves of necessity a certain measure of social and public 
danger, suggest to us in advance, the duty and the destiny of 
New England. • 

She is to be in the long and transcendent future of the 
Republic, the great conserving influence among the States. 
For nearly two centuries and a half, already, have her people 
kept the vestal fire of personal and public Liberty brightly 
burning in her little town democracies. Obedient to order, 
and practising industry, as well as loving individual freedom, 
they have acquired at last an instinct which discriminates 
between license and Liberty, between the passion of the hour, 
and the solemn adjudications of law. They possess the tra- 
ditions of Liberty, they inherit ideas of Government, they bear 
about in their blood and in their bones, the unconscious ten- 
dencies of race, which rise almost to the dignity of recollec- 
tions, and which are more emphatic and more permanent than 
opinions. By the toil of more than seven generations they 
have acquired and hold in free tenure, their titles and their 
possessions. The dignity of the freehold, the sacredness of the 
family, the solemnity of religious obligation, the importance of 
developing the intellect by education, the rightful authority 
of government, the rightfulness of property fairly earned or 
inherited, as flowing from the inalienable self-ownership of 
man and the rights of human nature ; the freedom of worship, 
the idea of human duty, expanded and enforced by the 
consciousness of an immortal destiny, are alike deeply 



12 



embedded in the traditions and convictions of the immense 
and controlling majority of our people. 

If there is aught which men deem radicalism, or fear as 
dangerous speculation in our theology or our politics, I call 
mankind to bear witness that there is no child so humble that 
he may not be taught in all the learning of the schools, no citi- 
zen so poor that he may not aspire to any of the rewards of 
merit or honorable exertion, not one so weak as to fall below 
the equal protection of equal laws, nor one so lofty as to chal- 
lenge their restraints ; no church or bishop able to impose 
creed or ritual on the unconvinced conscience ; no peaceful, 
pious worship which is unprotected by the State. Thus Liberty 
stands, and the Law supports Liberty ; popular education 
lends intelligence to Law, and gives order to Liberty, while 
Eeligion unfettered by human arbitration between the soul of 
man and the throne of the Infinite, is left free to impress the 
individual conscience with all the sanctions of its supreme 
behests, and of its celestial teachings. 

Your past history is a record of many great lives and great 
actions ; of men — to our way of thinking now oftentimes 
found narrow and even obstinate, but yet heroic and sincere ; 
of generations worthy to bear along and hand down the pre- 
cious aeeds from wliich have sprung the ideas and institutions 
that give dignity and welfare to a nation. 

Agriculturists ! yeomen of New England ! be faithful to her 
ideas, to her history, her institutions and her character. Be- 
hold and adorn your Sparta ! Reclaim and cultivate the 
untilled lands which still comprise more than two-thirds the 
area of the six New England States. Deepen and widen the 
f uuKlatioiis of your seminaries and schools of learning. En- 
courage genius as well as industry. Invite hither, and hold 
here, the profound thinkers, the patient students of Nature, 
those tireless watchers who wait upon tlie stars, or weigh the 
dust upon an insect's wing. Discard and discourage alike the 



13 



prejudices of ignorance, and the conceits of learning. Remem- 
ber that, even to-day, there is no man so wise that he under- 
stands the law which regulates the relation of any fertilizer to 
any crop ; that few have ever observed the mystery of that 
wonderful influence of the first impregnation of the dam upon 
the future offspring of whatever sire ; that the origin and con- 
tagion of the cattle disease or pleuro-pneumonia, remain hith- 
erto without adequate scientific exploration ; that the practical 
farmers and men of science all combined understand as little 
the destructive potato-rot, which concerns the economy of 
every farm and every household, as the Aborigines who first 
descried the Mayflower understood of the poems of Homer or 
the philosophy of Aristotle. Not undervaluing the past achieve- 
ments of science, remember how infinite the extent and variety 
of the conquests which yet remain to her. Let me exhort you 
also to bear in mind, that the great discoverers of knowledge 
are like prophets, appearing but seldom, and on great occa- 
sions ; that all genius is an intellectual century-plant, and that 
he who would make the time great, and the people noble, must 
not confound the mere distribution of commonplace facts, ele- 
mentary or traditional knowledge, with those conquests and 
acquisitions which flow from patient and original explorations. 
I congratulate all ingenious cultivators of the soil on the 
newly awakening interest in the establishment of Colleges and 
Professorships for tlie pursuit and the teaching of those 
branches of learning and science adapted to the promotion of 
Agriculture and the useful arts. It might satisfy the devout 
lover of truth to rejoice in these opportunities for the diffusion 
of knowledge. It is even enough reward for all the pains they 
cost, leaving out of sight the more practical and solid advan- 
tages they will impart to the coming generations, to enjoy with 
Bacon the contemplation of the delights of learning, when in 
the exultation of his mighty faith, he exclaims — 



14 



" It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death or adverse fortune ; 
which is one of the greatest impediments of virtue and imperfections 
of manners. For if a man's mind be deeply seasoned with the con- 
sideration of the mortahty and corruptible nature of things he will 
easily concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day and saw a woman 
weeping for her pitcher of earth that was broken, and went forth the 
next day and saw a woman weeping for her son that was dead ; and 
thereupon said, yesterday I saw a brittle thing broken, to-day, human 
mortality." ******* 

"Happy the man who doth the causes know 
Of all that is ; serene he stands, above 
All fears ; above the inexorable Fate, 
And that insatiate gulpli that roars below." 

" It were too long to go over the particular remedies which learning 
doth minister to all the diseases of the mind ; sometimes purging the 
ill humours, sometimes opening the obstructions, sometimes helping 
digestion, sometimes increasing appetite, sometimes healing the wounds 
and exulcerations thereof, and the like. For the unlearned man knows 
not what it is to descend into himself, or to call himself to account, nor 
the pleasure of feeling himself each day a better man than he was the 
day before. The good parts he hath he will learn to shew to the full 
and use them dexterously, but not much to increase them ; the faults 
he hath he will learn how to liide and colour them, but not much to 
amend them ; like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his 
scythe ; whereas with the leai-ned man it fares otherwise, that he doth 
ever intermix the correction and amendment of his mind with the use 
and employfnent thereof." 

The uses and the influence of true learning, the power which 
flows from its sincere cultivation, are so great and enduring, 
that were it a task, and not all a delight, I would not cease to 
urge and advocate, in this presence, the duty which is imposed 
on a people possessing the opportunities of our own. To all 
peoples, to all sections, as to each individual man, are open 
their separate careers. They can forfeit their places ; but they 



15 

can scarcely exchange them. You of New England may forget 
that you are of the stock that produced Jonathan Edwards, but 
you cannot make the cotton plant flourish in New Hampshire. 
You may turn your backs in jealousy or disdain, on Bowdoin 
and Dartmouth, and Harvard and Brown and Yale. You may 
set the village sexton above Cleaveland or Silliman or Agassiz. 
But when you have declined the sceptre of knowledge, you 
have not made the Merrimac or the Conneeticut navigable, like 
the Ohio, the Missouri, the Mississippi, or the Cumberland. 
You will win no glory by any narrow competition, nor by 
returning one railing word for another. Your greatness must 
be found hereafter where it has been found hitherto, in the 
highest development and cultivation of the faculties of men. 
Let thoughtless politicians propose to leave out New England in 
the cold, if they choose. I think the world will keep a warm 
place for her while Vermont leads the hemispheres in the intel- 
ligence and success of her sheep-breeding, while Alvan Clark 
makes a telescopic object glass, which is the marvel of astrono- 
mers, while the new Museum of Zoology at Cambridge exceeds 
in the variety and extent of many important classes of speci- 
mens, the more renowned museums of London and Paris. Of 
what account will be the sneers at Massachusetts of those " who 
hold it heresy to think," so long as one man's labor in Massa- 
chusetts is found by the census to be as productive of real 
wealth as the labor of five men in South Carolina, while the 
annual earnings of her industry exceed the annual earnings 
per capita of any other community in the world ? Schools, 
colleges, books, the free press, the culture of the individual 
everywhere, the policy of attracting, encouraging and develop- 
ing all the great qualities of the Head and Heart, — in a word, 
the production and diffusion of Ideas^ — in these shall rest for^ 
ever the secret of your strength to maintain your true position. 
I implore you to unite and not divide, in your policy. When- 
ever you can create a great school, or find a great professor, 



16 



unite to strengthen the school and to make sure of the man. 
Our system of diffusing knowledge through the local schools, 
our plan of distributing elementary instruction, are things of 
which we are sure. But your district schools will themselves 
go to seed, your knowledge will become bigoted and mean, 
unless you remember that the encouragement of these higher 
institutions from which they are fed, and where their teachers 
are themselves taught, is as needful as the creation of the head 
of water above the dam is to tlie spindle's point. 

I beg to exhort you, then, to put faith in Ideas; in the 
orderly arrangement of knowledge ; in the power to search out 
the hidden things of nature ; in the practical application of the 
highest and largest truth to tlie wants and affairs of man's daily 
life. Lead off — representative Farmers of New England — and 
let this dear, old, rocky homestead of thought and of Liberty, 
remain for countless ages the fountain and light of generous 
culture, of Science, Learning and Art. Your influence will 
tell then, with beneficent and forever-expanding power, on the 
destiny of the nation. You will live — the true conservatives of 
the civil state and of social life — " exempted from the wrongs 
of time and capable of perpetual renovation." 

I am sure, gentlemen, that it cannot be unbecoming, nor out 
of place, in this assembly of representative men, whether of the 
industry or the dignity of the New England States, to appeal to 
the lofty desires of a worthy and truly aspiring ambition. You 
would not permit me to suggest a selfish policy. You would 
not be patient with a narrow or merely sectional aim. Nor can 
I content myself with imagining a future which does not include 
the uses and the glories of that cultivation of intellectual and 
moral life, which is the sure foundation of National Immortality. 
I read but recently, with full heart and eyes suffused, the 
glowing tribute of a modern philosophic writer* to the services 

* William Archer Butler, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Trinity College, 
Dublin. (Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 258.) 



17 



rendered by ancient Greece, by cultivation of Letters and Art, 
to the happiness and welfare of all mankind. Let me repeat to 
you the language of his eulogy and, as you listen, let every 
patriot heart ask of itself, whether any fame can be so proud as 
that which recognizes the debt of nations and of ages to the 
culture and the intellect of a people, centuries after the end of 
their career. More than that : when the suggestion of Mara- 
thon shall bring to mind our own struggle for National existence, 
inquire of History whether a nation has ever been suffered to 
fall and die, so long as that principle was preserved and cher- 
ished in its own conscious life, which was the essential principle 
of its beauty and its power. 

"I well remember," he says, "in early boyhood being laughingly 
asked my opinion of the relative importance of Marathon and Waterloo ; 
and to me, to whom everything later than Greece and Rome was, at 
that time, a cipher in historical calculation, but one answer was possible. 
I doubt if I should now remodel my verdict. What was the day of 
Marathon as an element in the history of man ? Was it the brilliant 
struggle of some mountain tribe against the wild ravages of some ancient 
Zenghis or Timour ? Gentlemen, it was the cause of the world which 
was perilled that day. The destinies of ages hung tremblingly upon 
every blow of these gallant men of Attica. When, as the old histo- 
rian tells us, the soldier, covered with the dust of that immortal field, 
rushed into the Athenian assembly with his Xdigsrs ! XdiQa/xsv ! 
[Rejoice 1 we all rejoice ! ] and fell dead of his wounds as he gasped 
the words, he spoke a message to which the civilization of ages was 
to be the echo or the answer. Had the despot of Western Asia 
been as successful as his Turkish copyist, two thousand years later; 
had he gained his footing in Greece at that hour, and flooded with his 
slaves the soil in which were deposited the seeds of the world's advance- 
ment, the civilization of Europe had been adjoui'ned for centuries; 
Homer and the early lightnings of the Lyric Muse would have been 
perhaps irrecoverably lost; no age of Pericles would have placed Athens 
where she is in your hearts ; her borrowed hght would never have 
3 



18 



taught Romans to think and feel as well as act ; and the spirit would 
not have existed which, evoked from its sepulchre in codex and palimp- 
sest, was, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, once more incarnated 
in modern form, and became the vivifying principle of the literature of 
Italy, France, Germany and England." 

Moved by the inspiration of a theme so noble, an example so 
illustrious ; mindful of the audience before me ; not disturbed 
by the presence of this grand display of material substances, 
(which might seem to put away or postpone a thought belonging 
so much to the imagination, as well as to the reason,) I appeal 
to you, in the very capacity in which you are associated, to 
encourage by the influence of your Society, a culture of the 
intellect, here in New England, which shall be Athenian, 
universal. 

I believe that he would greatly underrate the New England 
mind and character who should suspect these views and aspira- 
tions of over-shooting either the occasion or the people. I am 
sure that they must reach the judgment and command the 
sympathy of the most practical as well as the most ideal. And 
I am sure that we shall see the hill-sides and waste lands of 
New England green with vines, white with harvests, or crowned 
by herds and flocks, when — and never until then — beauty and 
use, under the guidance of progressive science, tempered by 
careful experience, shall raise our agricultural life above the 
low estate of drudgery or accident, to the dignity and attrac- 
tion of an art. Then, when the toil of farming shall be univer- 
sally relieved and ennobled by those lofty incitements which 
stimulate the intellect and awaken the soul, the farmer's land 
will increase in value, and rural employment will command the 
devotion of men and women who will both borrow and lend 
adornment in the pursuit. In order to a more profound love 
for rural affairs and industry, men need a more profound 
knowledge — a knowledge which the mind itself will feel in the 



19 



invigoration of its powers and iu the awakening of its curiosity. 
In order to a better and more prosperous rural and farming 
life, we must have that life itself intrinsically richer and more 
free. 

We know that since the Board of Agriculture was estab- 
lished in England under the auspices of William Pitt in 1793, 
and since the scientific labors of Sir Humphrey Davy in the direc- 
tion of agricultural chemistry which that Board promoted, the 
face of England has changed as if by a charm. 

Improvements in husbandry have multiplied the quantity 
and value of her agricultural products many fold. A hundred 
acres which used to produce an annual average of forty tons, 
will now produce more than fourteen times forty tons of food 
for cattle and material for fertilization. 

The progress made in the thrift of farming, the development 
of the capacity of soils, in the productiveness of labor and 
capital devoted to agriculture at home, is manifest, even to 
observation as superficial as my own, and by the comparison of 
points of time not more than thirty years apart. But if you 
compare the facts as they were seen in England, for example, 
where science and skill have been most assiduously invoked by 
the owners and cultivators of the land, with the corresponding 
facts of to-day, taking the last century or century and a half 
as a field for comparison, and with what "miraculous organ" 
does the voice of science speak her vindication ! The cultiva- 
tion of the best grasses, the introduction of their choice 
varieties, the culture and perfecting of roots and vegetables 
adapted to the use of domestic animals, may be said to have 
re-created the island. The ox, the horse, the sheep, are 
scarcely the same animals they were in the time of William 
and Mary, when the average weight in gross of the neat cattle 
sold in Smithfield market did not exceed three hundred and 
seventy pounds each, and of sheep did not exceed twenty-eight 
pounds each, against an average weight of similar animals now 



20 



produced in England, and sold in the same markets, equal to 
eight hundred pounds for neat cattle and eighty pounds each 
for sheep. The value of improvements in the mere imple- 
ments used as the machinery and tools of agriculture, which 
improvements are themselves illustrations of the application of 
science to practical farming, is beyond human calculation. 
The single operation of ploughing, as it is affected by modern 
improvements in the plough, is one of those which will occur to 
all farmers as having received within the memory of the 
middle-aged agriculturist a conspicuous amelioration. The 
saving in the expense of teams in this country occasioned by 
those improvements within the last twenty-five years, has been 
estimated at not less than $10,000,000 annually, with an addi- 
tional annual saving equal to $1,000,000 in the cost of ploughs, 
while the better quality of tlie work done tells directly on the 
productiveness of the crops to the amount of many millions of 
dollars more. 

The tendency of young men to seek other than rural employ- 
ments is partially balanced already by the tendency of their 
fathers to return to them. And why may we not hope to see 
the time when the attractions of better methods of culture and 
a higher agricultural art, shall win the best, most capable and 
aspiiiiig of our youth to the country and the farm against the 
allurements of traffic and the town? 

The welfare of the poorest tiller of the soil, and that of the 
richest, are alike concerned in the progress and development of 
the agricultural art. Comfort and beauty wait alike for both. 
I am sure that no man will feel otherwise than grateful to his 
richer neighbor who pours out upon the ground a generous 
expenditure of his wealth in experimental farming or in orna- 
mental culture. For the experiment is tried for mankind as 
well as for himself, and the landscape made more picturesque 
by his taste, smiles as well for the cottager as for him. 



21 

Gentlemen of the New England Agricultural Society : 

It is due to your Association that I should not close these 
remarks without rendering my respectful acknowledgment of 
the honor, great but not earned by any merit of my own, of 
standing to-day in this place and of speaking as in some sense 
your organ. I accept it as a recognition of the paternal care 
extended by the Commonwealth, through the agency of its 
Board of Agriculture and of its fostering legislation, to kindred 
societies and to the great interest of Husbandry, and as an earn- 
est of that constant and loyal good will which I trust may con- 
tinue forever between the Government and the cultivators of 
that Art which is the parent of every other. I congratulate you, 
Mr. President, and your worthy associates, on the triumphant 
success which has attended this inauguration of your institution. 
It is a success won by your fidelity and intelligent zeal. I trust 
I may not seem to pass the boundaries of my place on this plat- 
form, if in these words of valediction, I assume to speak your 
acknowledgments, as well as those of the people of Massachu- 
setts, for the illustration and interest imparted to the occasion, 
and for the honor it enjoys in the presence and cooperation of 
those who represent our sister States. May the golden chain 
forever brighten and strengthen which binds these sister Com- 
monwealths in the accord of affectionate unity. May a like 
intelligence, freedom and happiness visit the homes and possess 
the hearts of the whole people of every section and every com- 
munity ; so that every home shall exult, ere long, in the shel- 
tering and victorious power of a government whose symbol 
shall be the flag of our fathers ; the secret of whose strength 
shall be found in a cordial and intelligent Union, on the foun- 
dation of Impartial Liberty as the common inheritance of 
Human Nature. 

In behalf of such a Union, and such a Government, a People 
like those of New England will continue in the future as they 
have done in the past, by the methods of Peace and in the 



22 

shock of Arms, to struggle against every foe, unconscious of 
dismay and despising temptation. For the preservation of our 
Nationality, they have, like their brethren in other sections, 
accepted the dread appeal to arms. For the sake of maintaining 
Government and Order and public Liberty, the loyal men of 
the Union have not shunned the arbitrament of War. Lovers 
of Peace and haters of discord, we of New England are slow to 
draw the blade, but we are slower still to yield to the infamy 
which must blast a coward's name, or to that infirmity of pur- 
pose which grows tired of a grand and momentous Duty 
because it tasks our manhood or our faith. To protect the 
printing press, the plough, the anchor, the loom, the cradle, the 
fireside and the altar, the rights of Labor, the earnings of 
Industry, the security and the peace of Home, if it must be, 
we can wield the sword, nor return it hastily to its wonted 
scabbard. For the brand of War becomes then the sacred 
emblem of every Duty and every Hope. 

" The sword ! — a name of dread; yet when 

Upon the freeman's thigh 'tis bound, 
Wliile for his altar and his hearth, 
While for the land that gave him birth. 

The war-drums roll, the trumpets sound, 
How sacred is it then ! 

Whenever for the Truth and Eight 

It flashes in the van of fight, — 

Whether in some wild mountain-pass, i 

As that where fell Leonidas, — 

Or on some sterile plain, and stern, 

A Marston or a Bannockburn, 

Or 'mid fierce crags and bursting rills, 

The Switzer's Alps, gray Tyrol's hills, — 

Or, as when sunk the Armada's pride. 

It gleams above the stormy tide, — 

Still, still, whene'er the battle-word 
Is Liberty, when men do stand 
For justice and their native land, 

Then Heaven bless the sword ! " 



LIBRfiRY OF CONGRESS 



002 744 099 ft 



